PR: OpenStar launches formal collaboration with MIT ... in quest to build New Zealand's first fusion energy device.

[OKIsItJustMe]

https://openstar.substack.com/p/openstar-launches-formal-collaboration

OpenStar launches formal collaboration with MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center in quest to build New Zealand’s first fusion energy device.

OPENSTAR TECHNOLOGIES
OCT 29, 2024

Here at OpenStar, we’re working toward fusion energy using a novel design concept and have signed a collaboration agreement with the MIT Plasma and Fusion Center (PSFC).

OpenStar is the only company developing a levitated dipole reactor for commercial purposes, and this collaboration is the next step on our mission to revolutionise renewable energy by harnessing fusion - the same process powering our sun.

The twelve-month agreement will see researchers at both MIT and OpenStar use advanced physics simulations to test methods of overcoming a core hurdle: heating a plasma to a hundred million degrees in order to initiate a fusion reaction.

“The collaboration will allow us to lean on some of the best brains in the business, and for this first phase, will give us essential insights into how we build the larger version of our reactor,” said Dr Darren Garnier, OpenStar’s Director of Plasma Science and a visiting scientist at the PSFC.

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https://substack.com/home/post/p-148287666

OPENSTAR TECHNOLOGIES
Junior - OpenStar's Fusion Magnet
Ahead of our team's attendance at ASC, read up on what makes our fusion magnet so unique.

OPENSTAR TECHNOLOGIES
AUG 30, 2024

From September 1-6, members of the OpenStar team will head to Salt Lake City Utah, to present at the Applied Superconductivity Conference (ASC).

Junior - OpenStars Fusion Magnet
(Video available at link.)

OpenStar Technologies

OpenStar Technologies is building a Levitated Dipole Reactor (LDR), uniquely integrating novel power supplies and leveraging High-Temperature Superconductors (HTS) onboard a levitating electromagnet. This half-tonne device, affectionately named Junior, houses a complex arrangement of systems unlike anything else in the world.

For more traditional fusion machines, a plasma is confined inside a fixed configuration of superconductors. For the levitated dipole, the superconductors are contained within a donut-shaped magnet with field lines emanating outwards, confining a plasma around the magnet in a dipole shape. We can observe this same shape in nature with Earth’s magnetosphere.

Though our founding in 2021 came from modern innovations here in New Zealand, it would not have been possible without the foundations laid by institutions such as MIT, Columbia University, and Tokyo University. MIT, alongside Columbia, began their Levitated Dipole Experiment, or LDX, in 1998 and officially ceased research in 2014. Over this time, they studied the quirks and benefits of Low-Temperature Superconductors for Dipole application and successfully confined a plasma. The University of Tokyo began experiments on RT-1, another levitated dipole device using HTS, in the early 2000s and they continue to extract findings from its operation today.

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